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Entitled ‘Memory and Transformation’, this year’s DCDC conference (Discovering Collections Discovering Communities) sought to bring together a variety of practitioners from different cultural sectors including museums, libraries and archives to discuss the importance of memory management across the cultural heritage sector and the duty of archives as memory institutions in ensuring our rich past is not forgotten but routinely remembered, commemorated and celebrated.

Celebrating Anniversaries: The Memory Milestones of History

In an opening keynote Jane Ellison (Head of Creative Partnership, BBC) stressed the need for archivists as custodians of memory to mark important anniversaries through a regular programme of outreach events and activities to ensure past histories are not overlooked or misinterpreted but suitably commemorated. Ellison discussed the pivotal role of the BBC Archives in facilitating such events including the recent centenary anniversary of the First World War through the provision of archival memories including: photographs, first-hand accounts from the front line and oral histories. In employing archival evidence we help to honour our history in the truest form possible, adding colour to past events and bringing them to life in a way simply retelling stories from the front line would struggle to achieve. In bringing the keynote to a close Ellison ended with a thought-provoking quote taken from the Armistice day Sunday service which really brought home the importance and duty of archives to act in an effort to remember well, “we are not responsible for what happened in history but we are responsible for remembering it well”.

Recalling Past Memories: The Role of Archives in Dementia Care

An example of a memory box

Having had the opportunity to work with individuals suffering from dementia In the past I have experienced first-hand the life-altering impact the condition can have both on the individual and their friends and family. It was extremely refreshing therefore to have the opportunity to hear from Sophie Clapp (Boots UK Archive) about the therapeutic role archives can play in helping to revive forgotten memories and transform the lives of people living with dementia.

Reminiscence Therapy: The Value of Memory Boxes

Through their work with Professor Victoria Tischler (Head of Dementia Care at the University of West London) Boots UK Archive have been able to develop multi-sensory memory boxes for care home residents living with dementia. Boxes include specially selected items from the Boots Archive which houses over ten thousand items including recipes, formulations and health-care products thought to trigger memories of nostalgia. From carbolic soap to Devonshire bath salt, the smell of these items was reported to have a powerful impact on dementia sufferers enabling them to recall past memories and strike up conversations, sparking new hope for researchers and families of those living with dementia.

The Power of Archival Memories

It was wonderful to attend the DCDC conference this year and learn more about the power of archives beyond their traditional research, evidential and community value as memory institutions with a duty and ability to commemorate historic milestones, acquire archival memories of different cultures and even provide reminiscence therapies.

Join the Attlee Foundation and Bodleian Libraries on the 25th of October in the Weston Lecture Theatre to celebrate the life and legacy of Clement Attlee.

The event will commence with a lecture given by John Bew on the political thought of Clement Attlee. A Professor of History and Foreign Policy at the War Studies Department at King’s College London, John Bew is also the author of five books including the award-winning biography Citizen Clem: A Life of Attlee (2016), which received the Orwell Prize for Political Writing, the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography and the Best Book in the U.K.

The lecture will be accompanied by a display of items from Clement Attlee’s personal archive. Covering the years 1945-1951, the display offers viewers a unique insight into the life and work of Attlee, forming a celebration of his achievements in both personal, political and public arenas.

Booking Information:

This event is free but places are limited so please complete the booking form via our website to reserve tickets in advance. All bookings are subject to a £1 booking fee.

Doors open at 6.15pm. The lecture begins at 6.30pm, and will be followed by a drinks reception.

Proxy Mode is an ‘offline browsing’ mode which provides an intuitive way of checking the quality and comprehensiveness of any web-archived content captured. Proxy Mode enables you to view documents within an Archive-It collection and ascertain which page elements have been captured effectively and which are still being ‘pulled’ from the live site.

Why Use Proxy Mode?

Carrying out QA (Quality Assurance) without proxy mode could lead to a sense of false reassurance about the data that has been captured, since some page elements displayed may actually present those being taken from the live site as opposed to a desired archival capture. Proxy Mode should therefore be employed as part of the standard QA process since it prevents these live-site redirects from occurring and provides a true account of the data captured.

Using Proxy Mode:

Proxy Mode is easy to setup and involves simply downloading an add-on that can be accessed here. There is also an option to setup Proxy Mode manually in Firefox or Chrome.

Potential Issues and Solutions:

Whilst using Proxy Mode a couple of members of the BLWA team (myself included) had issues viewing certain URLs in Proxy Mode often receiving a ‘server not found’ error message. After corresponding with Archive-It I discovered that Proxy Mode often has trouble loading https URLs. With this in mind I loaded the same URL but this time removed the ‘s’ from https and reloaded the page. Once Proxy Mode had been enabled this seemed to rectify the issue.

There was one particular instance however where this fix didn’t work and the same ‘server not found’ error message returned, much to my dismay! Browsers can sometimes save a specific version of the URL as the preferred version and will direct to it automatically. I discovered it was just a case of clearing the browser’s: cache, cookies, offline website data and site preferences. Once this had been done I was able to load the site once again using Proxy Mode #bigachievements.

The Oxford University Natural History Museum (photo by Roxana Popistasu, twitter)

This year’s PASIG conference, (Preservation and Archiving Special Interest Group) bought together an eclectic mix of individuals from around the world to discuss the very exciting and constantly evolving topic of digital preservation. Held at the Oxford University Natural History Museum, the conference aimed to connect practitioners from a variety of industries with a view to promoting conversation surrounding various digital preservation experiences, designs and best practices. The presentations given comprised a series of lightning talks, speeches and demos on a variety of themes including: the importance of standards, sustainability and copyright within digital preservation.

UNHCR: Archiving on the Edge

I was particularly moved by a talk given on the third day by Patricia Sleeman, an Archivist working for the UNHCR, a global organisation dedicated to saving lives, protecting rights and building a better future for refugees, forcibly displaced communities and stateless people.

Entitled “Keep your Eyes on the Information” Sleeman’s poignant and thought-provoking presentation discussed the challenges and difficulties faced when undertaking digital preservation in countries devastated by the violence and conflicts of war. Whilst recognising that digital preservation doesn’t immediately save lives in the way that food, water and aid can, Sleeman identified the place of digital preservation as having significant importance in the effort to retain, record and preserve the memory, identity and voice of a people which would otherwise be lost through the destruction and devastation of displacement, war and violence.

About the Archive

Sleeman and her team seek to capture a wide range of digital media including: you tube, websites and social media, each forming a precious snapshot of history, an antidote to the violent acts of mnemnocide- or the destruction of memory.

The digital preservation being undertaken is still in its early stages with focus being given to the creation of good quality captures and metadata. It is hoped in time however that detailed policies and formats will be developed to aid Sleeman in her digital preservation work.

One of the core challenges of this project has been handling highly sensitive material including refugee case files. The preservation of such delicate material has required Sleeman and her team to act slowly and with integrity, respecting the content of information at each stage.

It was a real privilege to attend the Digital Preservation Coalition’s workshop, ‘Getting Started with Digital Preservation’ in London on 17th May 2017. As a newcomer to this topic I was eager to learn more, and the workshop definitely didn’t disappoint, providing me with a fantastic insight into the tools recommended for digital preservation, the challenges it presents, and the solutions that can be used to overcome these.

The workshop began with an introduction to digital preservation, defined neatly by Sharon McMeekin (Head of Training and Skills) as the active management of digital content over a period of time to ensure continued access. We learnt about the sorts of features systems should incorporate to allow for continued access to digital content. These included:

Methods of dealing with these challenges included: storing more than one copy in different geographic locations, refreshing storage media, and integrity checking, also known as ‘fixity checking’ which is the process of checking if a digital file has remained unchanged.

As part of this final solution we also learnt about ‘checksums’ which are like ‘digital fingerprints’ also used to check if the contents of a file have altered.

The DPC also recommended generating a risk register as a further preventative measure to protect digital material against potential hazards. We even had a go at creating our own digital register based on a fictional scenario. This involved recording the:

As well as safeguarding digital material, we learnt that a risk register has the added benefit of introducing clearer planning within an institution, serving as an advocacy tool, highlighting clearer responsibilities, and benefitting the Digital Asset Register. DPC recommended that institutions use DRAMBORA, a digital repository audit method based on risk assessment which encourages organisations to generate an awareness of their objectives and activities before identifying and managing the risks to their digital collections.

Finally, Digital Asset Registers were recommended as useful tools for digital preservation coordination since they gather all of the digital information into one place and log preservation risks to collections. They also provide intuitions with a finding aid in the absence of other discovery methods and support best practice and advocacy.

The characterisation tool DROID was also mentioned as a useful software application for identifying file formats. Developed by the National Archives, this tool records the number, size, and format of each file in addition to creating a checksum for each.

The workshop was a wonderful opportunity to learn more about digital preservation and meet with other professionals from the same field. I am now really looking forward to undertaking some of my own digital preservation and archiving projects at the Bodleian.